1830-1900s GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

[RigDean]

1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

I was at an old ghost town site today for a few hours. I was lucky enough to get permission from land owner after hours of reasearch and driving around. There's basically nothing left, no landmarks, everyone seems to have different ideas as to where original buildings were...etc. very difficult site to pin down. mostly woods, thickets, brambles and tall grassland. anyway, so i was on this persons property which is in sight of the old cemetary, right next to a natural spring, and maybe a hundred yards or more from where the first official building is said to have been in town. This site has known civil war activity, indian annuities being paid in gold coins, a stage stop, and some other interesting activities going on back then. You can imagine how excited i was to actually get permission to go detecting on this site and really see what the e-trac could do. The property i was on covers several acres and is all mowed down by cows grazing and was super easy digging in most places, almost like really fine sand. Ran in manual mostly from 26 to MAX with very little falsing. Started out swinging down to the spring and made my way towards a gigantic tree. upon circling the tree i got a deeep signal. Fe #'s were bouncing like crazy, but the Co #'s would stay around 44-48....sounded sweet back and forth, turned ninety degrees and signal would just clip both ways. piinpointed and dug a plug, eeeaaassy diggin. got down to about eight inches and scanned the hole...no signal. so i scanned the pile of dirt...no signal. scanned the surrounding area..nothing. reluctantly filled the huge hole i made and moved on. overall, there was very few signals, but when i would get one it was reall iffy. any pointers out there for deep iffys, cause i'm going back with a minisharpshooter and hope fully don't get ran off for the size of holes i'll be diggin. Only recovered two items...a brass sprinkler attachment for a garden hose(2 inches deep) and a old ring pulltab under some great big trees in the clearing (4inches deep) I know this site has potential for an experienced detectorist. any tips or advice for deep iffy signals is greatly appreciated. DEAN

 

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[Gypsy Heart]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

Did you have old maps of the site? Sometimes the farmers buried the old foundations.The spring area would be your best place to begin. Everyone needed water. Grid out from there and go slow....
Look for small circular greener depressions that would indicate outhouse locations....packed earth or ruts for roadbeds can still be visiable after 100 years

 

[vondrewvious]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

If you flip your plug and loose the signal, I find that if you mash the plug with your foot it may come back. Also sometimes you just need to keep digging or move the dirt around in the hole. For the most part there was something there that you were detecting. Maybe when you moved things around, now the object is vertical.

 

[Eu_citzen]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

Try smooth or long response, takes time to get used to but helps to zoom on into those tiny objects like buttons and similar.
On the old explorer II I love to use the Audio 3 option which is similar. Love to use ferrous tones as well.

 

[RigDean]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

Thanks for the tips Gypsy Heart Unfortunately, i don't have any maps from back then, and nothing looks the same now. I'm still new at researching sites, i usually just drive around till i find something interesting, stop, swing and dig. It shows in my finds too that I will have to increase my efforts to locate a good site I stayed up all night and did some reasearch on this place and found some interesting things...old photos, descriptions of locations for important buildings, names of descendants who still live in the area, detailed stories of the daily life back then, military activities, farming activities, church activities, tragedies, blessings...Gave me a little something more to work with and fired up my enthusiasm for this adventure/mystery. I'm finding i enjoy the research almost as much as detecting the site itself...aaaalmost. Sun's coming up...goto sleep after staying up alnight and lose a days detecting or...time to make breakfast Usually don't but i better make some HH everyone

 

[RigDean]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

I've been experimenting w/smooth and may try it again today, but wouldn't it blend signals that are close together making it difficult to differentiate between the two thnx Eu_citizen. Vondrewvious, good point and duly noted. can't wait to geta pinpointer

 

[Eu_citzen]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

If you combine it with ferrous sounds it might be better? You really want to dig all none ferrous I guess.

You have to go slooow though. But it helps if the area is full of ferrous trash to.

I'm trying to relate the settings from my Expl II so there might be some difference.

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

Does this picture look familiar? This is the site of where the stage station was....

 

[RigDean]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

interesting...I did find an old stone foundation uphill from the spring, and the land owner said that's where it was, although the two trees out there don't look familiar, but those could've been removed... @ Eu_citizen, I don't think Ferrous sounds work as well on the etrac as they do on the explorer. The reason for this is the new mapping of targets on the ferrous 12 line. also, if a coin is close to some rusty nails, the coins ferrous numbers will read higher, therefore sound differently in ferrous sounds. I thought about getting an explorer just for this reason. The conductive numbers are more reliable, so I use Co sounds for reliability.

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

oops...I shoold have mentioned that this pic was taken about 1965......so if you can find those two trees growing together...that might help......I would assume the fence line would be in same place....

 

[RigDean]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

The property owner wasn't home today and she said not to go detecting when she's not there so i didn't get to investigate further. I went down the road to where an old school for girls was located and was part of the old town, while visiting with the property owner i mentioned metal detecting and she sortof put me off and said,"you'd have to ask my husband, and we're going to church soon, so maybe another day". this school for girls opened in 1845 and was in operation for about half acentury, with some military occupation during the civil war. after the civil war it was one of the first schools to be reopened. I was able to walk around the site with my camera and get some footage and get a feel for the place, so i hope they will let me detect there...

 

[RigDean]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

here's a few pics from my travels...

 

[Eu_citzen]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

RigDean,
Really they don't?
That is the main reason I got my Explorer, the ferrous sounds are great when relic hunting!

Never knew that about the E-Trac though. I thought it was just as good if not better then the Explorer.

 

[RigDean]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

I never said it was better, merely that the explorer's ferrous sounds, from what i've read is better. because of the new technology incorporated into etrac they had to remap the smartfind coordinates. ferrous numbers can be deceptive when the target is next to iron, even if iron is disced out, the etrac will not likely miss the target, although in ferrous sounds it may misinterpret what is there because of the iron so close to target. this is actually where the etrac excels, because instead of getting a null because of disced iron, you will get a dig signal, that's why i use conductive sounds on the etrac...more reliable. Still i thought of getting and SE anyway. HH

 

[Eu_citzen]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

RigDean,
I hear you. From what I hear it's a good machine.

 

[Joe(TX)]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

............Hi ! I don't own an E-Trac but do have almost 40 years of TH'ing experience!! Sounds like you are unsure of yourself and your machine mainly because it is all new to you!!......Until you know your detector better.......dig all of the signals.....but don't just dig the targets .......listen to all of the tones and even if you have to carry a note pad........ write down all of the Numberical readings and before digging ......guess what the target is going to be......after a while your guesses should be a lot more accurate..........once you get good at this .......you can start leaving the bad signals in the ground.........but for now dig all of the targets....at least you will not have the nagging feeling of leaving a goood target in the ground!.....Also a lot of the iffy signal are the ones to really concentrate on........HH.....Joe

 

[slykatt13]

Re: 1830-1900's GHOST TOWN, Deep Iffy signals

If you flip your plug and loose the signal, I find that if you mash the plug with your foot it may come back. Also sometimes you just need to keep digging or move the dirt around in the hole. For the most part there was something there that you were detecting. Maybe when you moved things around, now the object is vertical.

i agree.i used to fill the hole and move on with (false signals).i started to flip and roll my plugs in that situation. its usualy sitting at an odd angle .thats why you lose your signal.